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Correction appended

West Michigan employers have started to adjust their business operations in response to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

That's according to an annual report from Grand Valley State University that indicated local companies are apparently accelerating toward the major trends in employee health coverage by moving to mitigate the financial burdens from the law.

GVSU's annual Health Check report suggests that for 2014, the federal law drove up the use of workplace wellness, premium cost-sharing and high-deductible health plans — all of which are tactics that employers began deploying to control costs well before the law took effect in 2010.

The report also shows many employers across the region are passing on the costs of complying with the law to employees, reducing hiring and the hours of part-time employees, and giving greater consideration to dropping employee health benefits in 2015.

"They're certainly concerned about (the ACA), and they're certainly reacting to it," said Paul Isely, an economics professor at GVSU's Seidman College of Business who co-wrote the Health Check report. "There's a lot of uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to more conservative business decisions."

How companies are coping with the ACA was an added element to this year's report, which annually offers a look at trends within the region's health care sector. Survey responses from 168 employers show an increased interest in wellness. Many companies have adopted wellness practices in recent years to better control rising medical claims, which drive up policy premiums.

Among employers the Seidman College surveyed in the four-county area, 45 percent said they were considering a wellness program. That's on top of the 31 percent of respondents in Kent, Ottawa, Muskegon and Allegan counties that already incorporate wellness into their company, according to the 2014 Health Check report.

Nearly half of respondents are considering the introduction or expansion of incentives to drive employee participation in wellness, and 22 percent said they already have taken those measures.

Rules that took effect Jan. 1 under the ACA allow employers to increase the maximum financial reward for wellness to 30 percent from 20 percent of the cost of the premium for a health policy. The incentives can go to 50 percent if it's designed to help someone quit smoking or for tobacco-related programs.

Isely suspects the increased interest in wellness, cost-sharing and high-deductible benefits packages in response to the ACA are partly the result of each being proven cost control measures for employers.

"They are tried and true," he said. "They (employers) certainly knew that they were out there, and they certainly were probably already exploring them. A high-deductible plan and those sorts of things work very well within the ACA, so it's a way to minimize your exposure to the costs.

"It might be that firms are trying to get some cost containment out there, which isn't built into the ACA. If you move to a high-deductible plan, you're asking your employees to think about how expensive things are, and that creates some cost containment."

Speaking last week at MiBiz's annual Michigan's Healthiest Employers breakfast, Priority Health vice president of marketing Gene Cronin said companies that use wellness "understand that getting their workforces and Michigan healthy is not an option, it's an obligation. It's not an 'ought to do' but a 'must do.'

"It's a good business practice. The problem of an unhealthy workforce and an unhealthy community is significant, and it's very well-documented."

Other results from the GVSU survey about the ACA:

40 percent of respondents said they were considering passing along to employees the costs of adhering to mandates in the law, and 48 percent said they had.

41 percent were considering transitioning to a high-deductible health plan, and 36 percent had previously made the change.

About 81 percent of the employers in the four-county region that answered the survey offered employee health coverage for 2014. Just 60 percent said they intend to continue offering coverage in 2015, when a $2,000-per-employee penalty takes effect for employers with 50 or more full-time employees that do not offer coverage.

"The Affordable Care Act has created uncertainty for firms going forward — making it hard to understand implications at the firm level," states the Health Check report. "Interestingly, firms with (between) 50 and 250 employees are more likely to be undecided about their future insurance coverage. This is probably because the decision is relatively easy for small firms, and large firms are better able to research the best possible outcomes.

"This uncertainty for the firms and their workers may make them more cautious in hiring and investment."

22 percent of respondents reduced hiring plans for the next 12 months, and 21 percent were considering it.

"That's showing it's even slowing down our economy right now as firms are trying to adjust and move away from exposure to the cost of the ACA," Isely said.

29 percent of respondents reduced or limited the hours of part-time employees to avoid the ACA's mandate for employers with 50 or more full-time employees to offer health coverage to those who work an average of 30 hours or more a week. Twenty-two percent were considering it.

"As firms limit hiring and expansion plans, the growth of the region will be slowed," the Health Check report states. "This is compounded by the fact that firms seem to be spending considerable time and resources to adjust to the changes in the law that might have been spent on other productive outcomes."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect title for Gene Cronin. This version of the story is correct.